Troy University (TROY) was founded in 1887 as a small teacher-training college in rural Alabama. Today, it is home to more than 22,000 enrolled students, while around 70,000 use its digital platforms each year. It is a transformation that would be impossible to explain without understanding the man who has guided its technology strategy for the better part of three decades.

Dr. William Greg Price is the Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Security Officer at TROY. Having first joined the institution in the 1990s as a student, he later returned after working in IT-based roles across manufacturing and government agencies. "When I had an opportunity to return and play a pivotal role in moving the technology environment forward in the mid-1990s," he says, "it was a wonderful opportunity. A return-to-home type proposition."

How Troy University went global

When Greg – as he prefers to be known – first arrived, TROY was a regional university with a technology infrastructure he describes as dated and clunky – one that "essentially existed for a handful of data processing needs". Things have certainly changed since then.

In 1995, the university launched its first fully online courses, making it one of the earliest institutions in the world to offer a complete online educational experience. Greg and two colleagues were central to developing the technologies that made those initial steps possible. TROY serves a large contingent of active military students, some of whom take courses while deployed in forward locations around the world. Greg recalls a time when one of TROY's students took exams while orbiting the planet as an astronaut. "It's been a wild experience," he says.

The power of being invisible

Ask Greg what success looks like from his perspective, and his answer is disarming in its clarity. "If everything is working perfectly from an IT perspective, no one knows anything about what we have going on, or who we are. It simply works, and that's our biggest endeavour." He is candid about the personal quality that has helped him maintain trust over a long career. "I'm extraordinarily stubborn," he admits. "Simply being stubborn – not quitting, not giving in, seeing what the end result is and moving towards it – that has been quite a utility in the technology environment."

That stubbornness is tempered by advice absorbed from a mentor early in his career: don't lose sight of the end user. "Just because you can do something does not mean you should do something. Once it becomes an impediment or too disruptive, it's simply a nuisance."

A security-first approach

Greg’s background in cybersecurity influences a great many decisions he makes at TROY, which he describes as a "security-first and security-forward institution". The proliferation of consumer-facing AI tools in recent years has introduced new challenges, and the college's response is largely one of awareness rather than prohibition. "We are pushing a large awareness campaign to our students and our employees on how the practices they have been following very well for many years align with this new technology," he says.

The power of being invisible

Ask Greg what success looks like from his perspective, and his answer is disarming in its clarity. "If everything is working perfectly from an IT perspective, no one knows anything about what we have going on, or who we are. It simply works, and that's our biggest endeavour." He is candid about the personal quality that has helped him maintain trust over a long career. "I'm extraordinarily stubborn," he admits. "Simply being stubborn – not quitting, not giving in, seeing what the end result is and moving towards it – that has been quite a utility in the technology environment."

That stubbornness is tempered by advice absorbed from a mentor early in his career: don't lose sight of the end user. "Just because you can do something does not mean you should do something. Once it becomes an impediment or too disruptive, it's simply a nuisance."

A security-first approach

Greg’s background in cybersecurity influences a great many decisions he makes at TROY, which he describes as a "security-first and security-forward institution". The proliferation of consumer-facing AI tools in recent years has introduced new challenges, and the college's response is largely one of awareness rather than prohibition. "We are pushing a large awareness campaign to our students and our employees on how the practices they have been following very well for many years align with this new technology," he says.

AI as a force for student success

Beyond governance, AI is actively improving student outcomes. TROY uses AI-driven analysis of student behaviour and performance data to identify those at risk of falling behind. "Through the use of AI, those tools assist us in quickly discerning if a student needs additional assistance. AI has allowed us to be far more proactive instead of reactive."

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, Greg anticipates the continued proliferation of AI tools and shorter-form credentials – micro-credentialling – that bring more people into higher education outside of the traditional multi-year window.

For Greg, though, the road ahead is shaped by the same question that has guided his career since the mid-1990s: how do you make technology work so well that the people it serves never even have to think about it? 

"Our technology needs to be resilient, it needs to be redundant, but more importantly, it simply needs to work."